Using Chalkboard & Facts, Fareed Zakaria Carries Out GENIUS Smackdown Of Glenn Beck's Fearmongery!

[Turborama]

VIDEO: http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/12/10/gps.witw.glenn.beck.cnn

ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment. What caught my attention this week was a claim by Glenn Beck.

Here he is on his show last Monday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: What's that number? What is the number of Islamic terrorists one percent? I think it's closer to 10 percent,
but the rest of the PC world will tell you, no. It's minuscule.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Let's do a bit of math here. There are 1.57 billion Muslims worldwide. Take 10 percent of those Muslims
and you get 157 million.



That's how many Muslim terrorists Glenn Beck is suggesting there are in the world, 157 million.

Beck wondered why this wasn't receiving any media coverage. We'll let me suggest one reason. It is total nonsense.
A figure made up by Glenn Beck with absolutely no basis in fact. The United States State Department says there were
approximately 11,000 terror attacks committed in 2009.

This was all terror attacks everybody where in the world including Afghanistan and Iraq, which are really war zones.
But still, let's do more Math. Stay with me, Glenn. Let's be very generous and say that it took 100 people to plan
and execute each of those 11,000 attacks.

In fact, most of the attacks were solo and most involving two or three people, but let's be generous.



One hundred people times 11,000 terror attacks equals 1,100,000 people. But Glenn Beck's figure is 157 times higher than that.

If in fact there are 157 million Muslim terrorists in the world. What would the other 155,900,000 of them doing last year?

We asked CNN's National Security Analyst, Peter Bergen. Bergen has spent decades studying Muslim terrorists. He has
interviewed Osama Bin Laden. He travels frequently across the world to refresh his knowledge. We found Bergen in Afghanistan.



He e-mailed us to say the Beck's estimate is off by 1,000 percent.

Bergen says most estimates would say 0.1 percent of all Muslims are terrorists or insurgents. Now after Beck made this claim,
his producer got beck off on a technicality, saying, well...



...the dictionary.com definition of a terrorist includes people who advocate or support terrorism.

Of course, the FBI, the State Department and most other organizations define terrorists in the more common sense
that they are well, terrorists, but never mind. And this guy cited some polls that many don't like us and wish us harm.

Yes, many of us have been pointing that out for over a decade now. I wrote a "Newsweek" cover I say two weeks after 9/11
titled "http://www.newsweek.com/2001/10/14/the-politics-of-rage-why-do-they-hate-us.html">Why They Hate Us,"
to explain that, but hating America is not the same thing as being a terrorist.

Believe me, if we had 157 million Muslim terrorists active across the world, we would be hearing more about it. But Beck made
another claim in his discourse on terrorism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: You don't think 1 percent, half a percent here in the United States of radicals, of people who want to violently
overthrow the government is a problem? Of course it is. Why isn't it receiving coverage? Why?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Well, Glenn, again, maybe because it just isn't true. I can't find any poll or study or shred of data that suggests
that 1.5 million Americans, which is what that number would work out to, want to violently overthrow their government.

Now, there is a Pugh poll from March and some similar ones from other groups that find that about 20 percent of America
is angry with the federal government.



Does supporting such anger against the American government make one a terrorist?

According to Glenn Beck's producer and his dictionary.com definition, maybe, but in that case, how would one describe a man
who has been fuelling such singer against the American government on television daily for the last two years?

How, in other words, would one describe Glenn Beck?

TRANSCRIPT: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1012/12/fzgps.01.html

[Lasher]

1. I saw that segment.

It was really good. Hope to see more on this level from Zakaria.

[Kolesar]

3. WikiLeaks Shows the Skills of U.S. Diplomats

This column was super:

WikiLeaks Shows the Skills of U.S. Diplomats
By Fareed Zakaria

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034284,00.html#ixzz18T2IAek4

[rfranklin]

2. The people watching Beck will never see or comprehend this...

even if they do. They are emotionally unable to let go of their fear and prejudice.

[mwb970]

4. It's hard to imagine two people more mismatched intellectually.

Zakaria vs. Beck. Talk about opposite ends of the intelligence spectrum. Wow!

[Martin Eden]

5. Beck isn't an idiot.

Beck is a liar and a very talented propagandist who has become a very wealthy and influential man peddling propaganda to the real idiots.

[Turborama]

7. I agree with mwb970, Beck is nowhere near the same intelligence quotient as Zakaria

That's the point they were making.

Being good at dramatizing pre-scripted propaganda is no sign of intelligence. Also, stupid people can make lots of money from other stupid people. For example. look at how much Sarah Palin has made since McCain unleashed her into everyone's homes.

[Martin Eden]

8. My point is that Beck isn't simply unable to discern fact from fiction

He deliberately spreads information he knows to be false (or he simply doesn't care whether it's false). It's a mistake to think he's simply too stupid to know the difference. Does he have the IQ of Zakaria? I highly doubt it, but it is a very important distinction to understand that Beck is much more of a crafty liar than an honest idiot.

[Turborama]

9. I think he is. He has woven his own "facts" into conspiracy theories and really believes them.

I have watched his shows and I really don't think it's all just a con act. He really believes most of the shit he's spewing out. He's not an "honest idiot", he's a greedy http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html">sociopath.

(BTW, that embedded link defines Beck and his ilk perfectly)

[WhiteTara]

6. then how many Christian terrorists are there?

I think it begs the question. I'm thinking Hutare, Tim McVeigh, yada yada. So if there are 1 billion Christians, then by Beck's figures, 100 million of them are terrorists and most of them are here in the US....hide!